RIKUZENTAKATA – Temporary housing is taking shape next to an evacuation centre in this northern Japanese town, among the first places where rebuilding from the devastating earthquake and tsunami 10 days ago has begun.
Authorities aim to start moving families out of the cramped shelters where they have lived on mats – separated from neighbours by only cardboard – and into the houses by the end of the month.
“They have no privacy. They can’t even stretch their legs at night when they sleep because they might hit another person,” said Tstutomu Nakai, who helps run the evacuation centre in the gymnasium of a junior high school in Rikuzentakata.
“We have around 1,000 people sheltering here in the school and I think that they will be the first to get housing. We hope to allow people to move into these temporary shelters just as soon as they are completed,” Nakai said.
Steel structures, with walls and wood floors, have been erected in the parking lot of the school, which is on a hilltop overlooking the debris and devastated remains of the town.
Coastal Rikuzentakata was a town of 23,000, mostly elderly people. About 740 were killed in the earthquake and tsunami. More than 1,700 remain missing.
Mud-strewn mounds, mostly wood planks, glass and stones from houses where the town once stood, stretch for miles. Firemen are still slowly sifting through the debris, looking for bodies.
“The town for about 70 percent of the residents just disappeared,” said Katsutoshi Tomiyama, 69, whose three-month-old jazz bar and coffee shop was destroyed.
Almost 15,000 homes across northeastern Japan have been destroyed by the disaster, and more than 100,000 damaged.
In Rikuzentakata, few of its hundreds of buildings still stand, mangled and twisted. Residents and workers tempt fate by entering the structures looking for something to salvage.
Nurse Miho Itoh used ropes to pull herself up to the second floor of the shell of the clinic where she used to work.
“The doctor went missing when he was helping patients escape,” she said, holding his stethoscope that she found in the wreckage.
